Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Mike Nale
Part F
September 13, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Patti Hannah and Rhonda Haygood
Mike Nale: But, but when we got the call to back to Dak To we knew it was going to be bad. This was November of 1967. And two thirds of us got wiped out during that time, either killed or wounded during November '67. And all of us smoked back then and they said "Y'all go over there and stand around and light them up and take your rucksacks off and all." And said you know, "Just take it easy a minute." And I saw some guys with cameras, the big ones, like NBC and CBS and all of them had back then and guys with still cameras with big lens on it. And I asked a buddy of mine, I said, "Who do you think that is? NBC, CBS, you know, Newsweek, Times?" He said, "No, you dumb- He said, "That's grave registration." I said, "What?" And he said, "That's grave registration." And what they do and they were taking pictures of you. They knew we were going to be in contact. They were taking pictures of you so they could recognize your body maybe if you were- so we knew right then, we said, "This is not going to be good." So we went into a Fire Support Base 12, which was sometime around November, maybe the tenth, ninth or tenth, sometime in that area, within a couple of days, that's, that's it. And we heard the, the 1st Battalion was in a fire fight. I think it was A Company 1st Battalion, it might have been C. And we were about two clicks away, two thousand meters. And we were kind of like up on a little hill and we listening over the radios. And you could hear the kek,kek,kek,kek boom, kek,kek,kek,kek, boom! You know, B40 rockets going off and machine gun fire , our fire, their AK47s going off. And their battalion commander was flying around them. And he ah, the captain asked, we all laugh about this, things aren't funny to other people but when you're in combat they're funny to you. But they said, "We need some more ammo, Sir." And the battalion commander said, "Okay, Captain." And about thirty minutes later we heard them again say, "We need ammo, Sir." He said, "Captain, I dropped the ammo to you." He said, "Once." He said, "Get it." And he said, "Well, GD Sir, you dropped it then you want me to go ask them for it back?" And we just rolled laughing. He said, "Captain, don't be insubordinate." That, that battalion commander was later relieved of command. You had to volunteer to get in the 173rd Airborne Brigade. It was a strike unit and if you showed any cowardice you were out and you didn't- it was, it was an elite outfit. But anyway we got, we went Fire Support Base 16 and they dropped, we call them blockbuster bombs, but it was a, it was a huge bomb. I forget how many thousand pounds. It might have been ten thousand pounds. But it had a huge fuse on it. And what it did, it didn't go into the ground, it would explode on top and it would, the concussion and everything would go out. And that thick bamboo, it would just clear an area out. There was nothing left. They didn't want really big craters in the ground. They just wanted everything- cleared us out. So we went in and started cutting bamboo down. We were finding, they used blue commo wire everywhere and we said, "You know, this is not going to be good this time." And so, November the 12th I was laying on the back side of Fire Support Base 16. And A Company went a hundred meters outside the fire support base and made contact with a battalion of North Vietnamese Army regulars, we called them NVA regulars. And so they told my platoon to saddle up and go over and help A Company, that they were taking causalities. So we got about half way over and they pinned us down for maybe five minutes. We shot it out and then they let us up. I'll never know to this day but I think they thought there was a smaller force inside the fire support base where the artillery pieces they had brought in were. And they were going to hit them and probably try to get the artillery, you know. But anyway we shot it out and it was sporadic all day, start stop. Bombs would come from back behind you. They said, "Here they come." We had artillery you could hear it dropping in. And they would come in and they were so fast the speed of sound hadn't caught up with them. But you'd start seeing tree limbs like this exploding right in front of you, you know, usually within fifty to seventy-five yards. And then you would hear a mmmp, and they had chain guns. They would fire like six thousand rounds a minute. And twenty mm explosive head that was rounds like this and it would just – And then they would drop a bomb and it would roll you like a pancake sometimes. It would just flip you. And you would think in your mind, "Don't drop that any closer. That's close enough." And then they would drop Napalm which is a jelly gas. And it sucks all the oxygen out of the air and you just sit there and be [Mr. Nales makes sounds] trying to get your breath because there wasn't any oxygen in the air. And then they came over in the old, I want to say they call them sky raiders, it's, it's a , it's the same type plane that Baa Baa Black Sheep, Pappy Boyington, flew. They call those coin aircraft. We were up on one side of the hill and then there was a valley and then the other side. You could see the pilot turn his head in the cowl, the little glass bubble he was in. And they would drop butterfly bombs. A butterfly bomb was a bomb that they'd open up and they were like tin cans about like that. And they had like little spinners on them. As they came down those spinners would arm, arm them. They'd be like antipersonnel. They'd just go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, like a bunch of grenades going off. But we captured this little NVA soldier who was down there getting water in his canteen. And we knew a lot back then by how they were armed and how they were dressed, what kind of condition they were in. This guy had a fresh haircut, had brown-clad khakis that were starched, brand new Ho Chi Min sandals. We took his AK47 apart. It still had cosmoline in it, had a brand new weapon. And he pointed across the hill and he said, "My battalion's across the hill over there." Well about 4:00 that morning you started hearing mortar, thump, thump, and they warned us that's the way mortar sounds when it's going off. And the thing about mortars you never know where the first one is going to hit. But they walk them in a line, you see, either this way or this way. And if you're lucky enough to see which way they're coming you can get out of the way a lot of times of them. But at night time you can't see, you can just, you can just hear. And we were up most of the night that night. Well I walked back through the Fire Support Base 16 and we cleaned our weapons. There were several people that were killed at Fire Support Base 16. A Company had a few killed and they had some WIAs, was wounded, WIAs was wounded in action, KIA was killed in action, MIA was missing in action. So they got all of them out. One of them was a 1st sergeant I had named Salias, S-a-l-i-a-s, and they got him out. So we came back through the fire support base and cleaned our weapons because we had shot several hundred rounds through our weapons that day. We cleaned them, loaded up the grenades. They said a load was four hundred and something rounds. But each one of us had a thousand or twelve hundred rounds on us. I carried fifteen frag grenades. I carried them in claymore bags. I had a claymore. I had a M72 LAW, light anti-tank weapon. We used them to hit bunkers with, buzz bunkers. We had a 90 recoilless rifle, we carried a round, each one of us carried a round for it. We carried a eighty-one mortar round for the mortar platoon. And so you were just, we were loaded down to the max. My platoon ended up taking over point because the day before those jets had dropped some CS gas, tear gas, and they had to destroy the pellets. Front platoon stayed back and destroyed the, the ah, the CS gas so they couldn't get it and use it.

Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections.

Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Mike Nale
Part F
September 13, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Patti Hannah and Rhonda Haygood
Mike Nale: But, but when we got the call to back to Dak To we knew it was going to be bad. This was November of 1967. And two thirds of us got wiped out during that time, either killed or wounded during November '67. And all of us smoked back then and they said "Y'all go over there and stand around and light them up and take your rucksacks off and all." And said you know, "Just take it easy a minute." And I saw some guys with cameras, the big ones, like NBC and CBS and all of them had back then and guys with still cameras with big lens on it. And I asked a buddy of mine, I said, "Who do you think that is? NBC, CBS, you know, Newsweek, Times?" He said, "No, you dumb- He said, "That's grave registration." I said, "What?" And he said, "That's grave registration." And what they do and they were taking pictures of you. They knew we were going to be in contact. They were taking pictures of you so they could recognize your body maybe if you were- so we knew right then, we said, "This is not going to be good." So we went into a Fire Support Base 12, which was sometime around November, maybe the tenth, ninth or tenth, sometime in that area, within a couple of days, that's, that's it. And we heard the, the 1st Battalion was in a fire fight. I think it was A Company 1st Battalion, it might have been C. And we were about two clicks away, two thousand meters. And we were kind of like up on a little hill and we listening over the radios. And you could hear the kek,kek,kek,kek boom, kek,kek,kek,kek, boom! You know, B40 rockets going off and machine gun fire , our fire, their AK47s going off. And their battalion commander was flying around them. And he ah, the captain asked, we all laugh about this, things aren't funny to other people but when you're in combat they're funny to you. But they said, "We need some more ammo, Sir." And the battalion commander said, "Okay, Captain." And about thirty minutes later we heard them again say, "We need ammo, Sir." He said, "Captain, I dropped the ammo to you." He said, "Once." He said, "Get it." And he said, "Well, GD Sir, you dropped it then you want me to go ask them for it back?" And we just rolled laughing. He said, "Captain, don't be insubordinate." That, that battalion commander was later relieved of command. You had to volunteer to get in the 173rd Airborne Brigade. It was a strike unit and if you showed any cowardice you were out and you didn't- it was, it was an elite outfit. But anyway we got, we went Fire Support Base 16 and they dropped, we call them blockbuster bombs, but it was a, it was a huge bomb. I forget how many thousand pounds. It might have been ten thousand pounds. But it had a huge fuse on it. And what it did, it didn't go into the ground, it would explode on top and it would, the concussion and everything would go out. And that thick bamboo, it would just clear an area out. There was nothing left. They didn't want really big craters in the ground. They just wanted everything- cleared us out. So we went in and started cutting bamboo down. We were finding, they used blue commo wire everywhere and we said, "You know, this is not going to be good this time." And so, November the 12th I was laying on the back side of Fire Support Base 16. And A Company went a hundred meters outside the fire support base and made contact with a battalion of North Vietnamese Army regulars, we called them NVA regulars. And so they told my platoon to saddle up and go over and help A Company, that they were taking causalities. So we got about half way over and they pinned us down for maybe five minutes. We shot it out and then they let us up. I'll never know to this day but I think they thought there was a smaller force inside the fire support base where the artillery pieces they had brought in were. And they were going to hit them and probably try to get the artillery, you know. But anyway we shot it out and it was sporadic all day, start stop. Bombs would come from back behind you. They said, "Here they come." We had artillery you could hear it dropping in. And they would come in and they were so fast the speed of sound hadn't caught up with them. But you'd start seeing tree limbs like this exploding right in front of you, you know, usually within fifty to seventy-five yards. And then you would hear a mmmp, and they had chain guns. They would fire like six thousand rounds a minute. And twenty mm explosive head that was rounds like this and it would just – And then they would drop a bomb and it would roll you like a pancake sometimes. It would just flip you. And you would think in your mind, "Don't drop that any closer. That's close enough." And then they would drop Napalm which is a jelly gas. And it sucks all the oxygen out of the air and you just sit there and be [Mr. Nales makes sounds] trying to get your breath because there wasn't any oxygen in the air. And then they came over in the old, I want to say they call them sky raiders, it's, it's a , it's the same type plane that Baa Baa Black Sheep, Pappy Boyington, flew. They call those coin aircraft. We were up on one side of the hill and then there was a valley and then the other side. You could see the pilot turn his head in the cowl, the little glass bubble he was in. And they would drop butterfly bombs. A butterfly bomb was a bomb that they'd open up and they were like tin cans about like that. And they had like little spinners on them. As they came down those spinners would arm, arm them. They'd be like antipersonnel. They'd just go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, like a bunch of grenades going off. But we captured this little NVA soldier who was down there getting water in his canteen. And we knew a lot back then by how they were armed and how they were dressed, what kind of condition they were in. This guy had a fresh haircut, had brown-clad khakis that were starched, brand new Ho Chi Min sandals. We took his AK47 apart. It still had cosmoline in it, had a brand new weapon. And he pointed across the hill and he said, "My battalion's across the hill over there." Well about 4:00 that morning you started hearing mortar, thump, thump, and they warned us that's the way mortar sounds when it's going off. And the thing about mortars you never know where the first one is going to hit. But they walk them in a line, you see, either this way or this way. And if you're lucky enough to see which way they're coming you can get out of the way a lot of times of them. But at night time you can't see, you can just, you can just hear. And we were up most of the night that night. Well I walked back through the Fire Support Base 16 and we cleaned our weapons. There were several people that were killed at Fire Support Base 16. A Company had a few killed and they had some WIAs, was wounded, WIAs was wounded in action, KIA was killed in action, MIA was missing in action. So they got all of them out. One of them was a 1st sergeant I had named Salias, S-a-l-i-a-s, and they got him out. So we came back through the fire support base and cleaned our weapons because we had shot several hundred rounds through our weapons that day. We cleaned them, loaded up the grenades. They said a load was four hundred and something rounds. But each one of us had a thousand or twelve hundred rounds on us. I carried fifteen frag grenades. I carried them in claymore bags. I had a claymore. I had a M72 LAW, light anti-tank weapon. We used them to hit bunkers with, buzz bunkers. We had a 90 recoilless rifle, we carried a round, each one of us carried a round for it. We carried a eighty-one mortar round for the mortar platoon. And so you were just, we were loaded down to the max. My platoon ended up taking over point because the day before those jets had dropped some CS gas, tear gas, and they had to destroy the pellets. Front platoon stayed back and destroyed the, the ah, the CS gas so they couldn't get it and use it.